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Once again, 007 is nowhere to be found.

This shouldn’t be alarming. There are databases, spreadsheets, and myriads of grumbling high-level personnel documenting the truly embarrassing number of times 007 has been completely off the map. Q certainly didn’t step into his predecessor’s shoes expecting much communication from any of the agents beyond the odd “here’s your treat bag full of cutting-edge lethal goodies, here’s how to use it, don’t botch it up” exchange, but Bond has always been a rung above the rest.

Q is holed up in Jordan for the Special Operations Forces Exhibition and Conference, settled into one of the fortress-fortified hotels that have been arranged for their kind. He’s long since swept the room for anything remotely questionable and is currently sitting in bed with his laptop and Bluetooth and trying his damnedest not to grumble at M about 007 having the temerity to disappear before the Q division had a chance to touch base with him.

He’s mid-grumble when he catches sight of someone on the balcony and nearly has a heart attack.

Q breaks off his lament about security upgrades, scarcely hearing M’s voice asking if he’s still there. Somehow, he manages to scramble for the Browning under the night table and have it in hand without making a sound or overturning the empty mug at his elbow.

Of course, by the time he’s done this, the intruder has already jimmied the lock on the sliding door and made his way inside. Practical firearm training never was Q’s forte.

“What’s going on,” M is demanding in that tone that makes it clear this isn’t so much a question as a command.

And then the door slides closed again and 007 strolls into the room, neat as a pin and demure as a dowager. Q nods at him sardonically, lowers the pistol, says, “007’s just come through the door. We’ll be in touch.”

He takes a minute to collect himself by closing his notebook and removing his headset and very definitely not glowering, as he’s never managed a convincing glower in his life. He does, however, allow himself a put-upon sigh. “It’s customary to wait for someone to open it first.”

“Pressing matters,” says Bond. “I sustained an injury and now I can’t fire my own bloody gun.” He holds up his right hand, which is bearing a fresh scar down the centre of the palm like an extremely ugly fate line, and sets the Walther on the breakfast table beside a festive spray of brochures. “I’ve been making due with other models, of course, but there’s something to be said for consistency.”

“I suppose I should be grateful you haven’t lost it again,” Q says, sliding out of bed. He’s in a pair of flannel pyjama bottoms and nothing else, but Bond can damn well deal with it. “Why on earth are you not still in La Marsa?”

Bond shrugs and Q’s gaze automatically tracks the roll of his shoulders, the muscles of his arms. The plain black t-shirt he’s wearing has to be at least a size or two too small, possibly airbrushed on with the express intention of making Q’s blood run several degrees hotter. “It went up in flames,” he says, which in 007-ese could either mean the mission was a dead end or there really is a gaping hole the shape of La Marsa still smouldering away on the northeast coast of Tunisia.

Bond has a nasty tendency to forge his own paths and render himself impossible to be tailed. Generally speaking, Q has always liked a challenge.

He’s ready to demand how in the hell Bond was able to sidle up to a nineteenth-storey window in a handsomely guarded hotel in the first place, but reckons it’s probably best not to bother. “This may come as a shock, but you could have let me know about your little problem some other way. There are these things called mobiles.”

Bond just graces him with an arch look and turns towards the bathroom.

Q follows him, noting in passing that he doesn’t seem to be limping or exhibiting any other signs of injury besides the new scar. “Or email, that’s another. Smoke signals might have worked as well—” and off goes the preposterously tight black shirt, which is surely some 007-patented move to ward off unwanted lecturing, but Q only hesitates for a moment before pressing on, “—or even a brief Facebook message if you were feeling especially daring.”

That’s enough to give Bond pause. He glances up in the midst of turning on the tap and fuck all if he doesn’t manage to look like the cover of a mildly pornographic fitness magazine even though his face has more lines than a map of the Underground. “You can’t be serious.”

“I have a grudging sort of admiration for billionaires who are younger than I am,” Q says truthfully. “And it’s notoriously easy to hack. Do you have any idea how many ill-advised important people actually have Facebook accounts?”

“Really.” Bond is busy stealing some soap now, then stealing a hand towel in order to give his face and neck a cursory rubdown. It’s all making Q very conscious of his own shirtless state and lack of picture-perfect abdominals, but he’s never made excuses for his appearance and he’s damn well not going to start now. Bond invaded his hotel room, he’s just going to have to cope with what he’s found inside.

“Just that M’s going to debrief you over the coals,” Q points out, standing his ground in the bathroom doorway until Bond grudgingly replaces the towel on the towel rack before shouldering past. And Christ, just the barest brush of one of those shoulders against his own is enough to have Q’s bare toes curling atop the tile.

“Then I’ll just have to fall off the map again.”

He’s left the black shirt crumpled beside the sink, but Q sees no reason to draw attention to this. “You’re aware, of course, just how difficult it is to go off the map in this day and age. But you seem to have a fascinating habit of reshaping days and ages as you please.”

Bond doesn’t acknowledge the truth in this, just starts undoing his trousers. If this is some sort of diversionary tactic the double-ohs are all drilled in, it’s working deplorably well.

“You couldn’t have waited until I was back at headquarters?” Q bursts out. He’s determined not to look away. Half the team still assumes he’s a stuttering greenhorn as it is.

There’s a wry twist to Bond’s mouth, not quite a genuine smile. “Oh, I couldn’t bear the thought of missing SOFEX.”

“I can’t argue with you there,” Q admits, and watches as Bond turns to drape his trousers over the arm of the sofa.

He clearly plans to stay whether Q likes it or not.

“Please, make yourself at home,” says Q. “There’s a room service menu by the door. I’m going to bed.”

Bond nods, looks at him with those eyes like gas jets.

Well.

Why the hell not.

“It’s a big bed,” says Q.

---

In the morning, Bond comes awake like a shot: eyes flying open, hand flying to the SIG Sauer he’s been using in lieu of the Walther, face utterly impassive.

“It’s only me,” Q says, hunched over his laptop in the breakfast nook.

“I can see that.” He sounds almost quizzical, but surely that can’t be right. “You’re still here.”

“Of course I am,” Q tells him patiently. “There’s a coffee maker and a good assortment of teas,” he adds, since evidently Her Majesty’s finest takes a little time to get his wits about himself first thing in the morning, but Q supposes that after the hundred brands of hell he’s been through he has a right to be a little flawed.

By the time Bond has downed enough caffeine to properly join the land of the living, Q is nearly ready to pack up and treat himself to a good long shower before the exhibition starts.

“Portuguese,” Bond says, coming up behind him before he’s had a chance to wrap things up and start powering down. “Interesting. Educated abroad, then, or your stepfather was perhaps of Portuguese descent, I’m assuming.”

Q narrows his eyes even though Bond can’t see it. He hasn’t ever mentioned his stepfather, or any members of his family at all, to a single colleague. So goes the dashing occupation of working alongside spies. “No. I was playing back the results of a new translation software and don’t actually speak a word of Portuguese. But thank you for ascribing such a worldly background to me.”

He expects to hear a snort or a chuckle in response, but there’s nothing. Only a big callused hand that cups the back of his neck before drifting down his chest, leaving a quicksilver trickle of heat under Q’s skin in its wake.

If he closes his eyes, he can recall every detail, projected in clear-cut contrast behind his lids—that broad chest like a solid slab of muscle, the winter-white pocks of scar tissue from shrapnel, the deep ugly pink of long-healed bullet wounds. Q had traced his fingernail down one thread-thin line of raised skin, just there, just above the jut of a hip bone, then done it again with his mouth.

“Why are you here at all?” The voice rubs its way against every already-frayed nerve ending Q possesses, slow and intimate as an actual kiss. “I have it on good authority you can’t stand flying.”

“With the right cocktail of medication, I’m willing to make the odd exception. And I can’t resist a good weapons expo.” His pulse gives a little leap, but he goes right on typing as those big blunt fingers rove and touch and deliver the occasional gentle pinch. The warm rush of breath behind his ear is enough to have him breaking out in goose bumps.

“We all have our weaknesses, don’t we,” murmurs Bond, and parts his lips against the side of his throat.

And Q arches, nodding since he can’t manage a reply with words. The kickback had floored him, quite literally, the first few times he’d fired anything. It hadn’t been long before he began looking into alternatives, then customising his own.

It’s like a bloody soap opera, the two of them sharing a hotel room in the middle of Amman thanks to 007 unexpectedly slogging in after a stint of impossible shenanigans abroad. Tanner had warned him about this, how nothing was beyond the realm of possibility when it came to the agents, and at the time Q had waved it off and gone back to the dossiers he was still committing to memory. He never expected to find himself hyperaware of everything from the heat of Bond’s mouth at his neck to the rasp of the chair’s upholstery against the backs of his thighs, sitting there squirming in his boxers like a knob since at some point during the night his flannel pyjamas were rendered unwearable and he’d had to execute a switch.

Bond’s fingers are idly toying with the waistband and it’s all Q can do not to grip his wrist and grind up into the press of his palm.

Somehow, he finds his voice again, which comes out sounding perfectly and shockingly calm. “The expo doesn’t start for another hour. I’m going to have a shower and get some more work done.”

“Are you, now.” Bond’s hand dips a bit lower, Q’s head falls back a bit farther, and the next thing he knows he’s being kissed within an inch of his life and trying to wriggle his pants off his hips at the same time, strung out and struggling until he hears the faint click of his computer going into standby mode.

“It’s a big shower,” says Q.

---

The flight back is everything Q could ask for, which is to say uneventful. He spends most of it in a voluntarily administered comatose state, aware in the most distant of ways that 007 is just a seat away.

Occasionally there’s a flutter of fingertips over the pulse in his wrist, grounding him the way planes never do.

He doesn’t know what to make of that, but he doesn’t question it either.

---

At MI6, work continues as usual. Mostly.

Q spends the majority of his time in the lab, prepared to resume his usual routine of trial runs and keyboard-tapping and not seeing a great deal of the agents except in passing.

Except 007 seems determined to throw wrench after wrench into the works.

Word varies, but evidently 007 has been pulled off the shelf for a short time. This is either because M still isn’t at all pleased with how he handled the situation in La Marsa or because 007 himself has decided to concentrate on training a bit longer before throwing himself fully into the field again.

And somehow, he always seems to find his way into Q’s path. Q catches 007 looking at him too often for it to be happenstance—eyes cool and unreadable, arctic-sharp, making the hair on his nape stand on end.

“Did you get off at the wrong floor?” Q asks him after this has happened on far more occasions than coincidence can account for. He’s been doing his best to maintain a mien of professionalism, but it all seems to fly out the window the second James fucking Bond wanders into the room.

He hopes to God nobody else has noticed. Then again, it’s entirely possible everyone else is in this boat right along with him.

And that’s when Bond kisses him.

It’s the last thing Q expects in addition to being the precise thing he’s been craving ever since he tottered off that godforsaken plane. His body responds long before his brain does and God, Bond’s mouth is all tongue and heat, wet and shameless and devastating enough that both of Q’s hands end up seizing hold of his sharp-pressed lapels for dear life.

“If you’re trying to get me sacked,” he hisses, “there’s got to be a better way to go about it.”

This is all a terrible idea, both on a personal and a professional level, but Q’s curiosity has always been his undoing, ever since he was a scrawny little greyhat with a thirst for mischief and a weakness for firearm design.

“Your shoe’s untied,” Bond says primly, and disappears before Q can remember how to stand unaided. Shoelaces be damned.

---

The next day, he shows up while Q is unpacking his lunch one-handed and using the other hand to debug one of his colleagues’ monitors.

“What in the world is that?” Bond is staring at his shami tikki with distinct suspicion.

“It’s—” Q begins, and then Bond is actually helping himself to a bite of it, entirely uninvited.

Q reaches out and slaps his hand without thinking. “It’s my lunch, that’s what it is. The key word being my.”

“Of course,” Bond says magnanimously, passing it over and frowning at a bruise on Q’s forearm just under the rolled-up sleeve of his jumper. “What happened?”

Q tucks in. “Nothing. I bumped into a table yesterday.”

“Those tables are a bloody menace,” says Bond. He doesn’t sound as if he’s joking. “Too many sharp corners.”

“Believe it or not, I can normally navigate around the occasional table.”

Bond just harrumphs and eyes Q’s arm as if it’s just insulted his mother.

That night, Q goes home with him for the first time and ends up with all manner of intriguing new marks to show for it, even manages to leave a respectable cluster of fingertip bruises on Bond’s thick shoulders in return. Interestingly, 007 seems to have no quarrel whatsoever with this.

---

Little by little, Q gets used to it, having Bond turn up out of nowhere to give him a subtle once-over and take the first crack at his lunch.

It’s all a bit odd, but he supposes 007 isn’t much of a cook. Q, a notoriously picky eater growing up, had to learn to fend for himself or starve.

The ante goes up one evening when he’s lingered at work long enough for the rest of his team to thin down to nothing. There’s a certain sense of liberation that comes with staying late, Q’s found—answering to no one, free to pore over whatever project he pleases without interruption. Once upon a time, Q would have protested that last thing he needed was a reputation as an eccentric, but if ever there was a place to embrace that reputation and run with it, MI6 is it.

This time, when Bond appears out of nowhere, he’s kind enough to clear his throat before Q can catch sight of him and throw the first thing at hand. “Good evening.”

He’s wearing one of his suits, the kind with creases so perfectly pressed Q could probably turn them into glasscutters if he put his mind to it, the kind that make Q too lightheaded to think of anything remotely witty. Carefully, he sets down the half-gutted radio he was tinkering with. “Hi?”

And then 00-fucking-7 is pouncing on him like a very hungry jungle cat and Q is recoiling even though his groin is already pressed flush with one of Bond’s thighs and his fingers are tight around a fistful of shirt collar. “Are you out of your mind? There are surveillance cameras here.”

“Not anymore there aren’t,” Bond says airily. “What do you take me for?”

Then he threads his fingers into Q’s hair and does something with his tongue that makes Q want to throw himself on top of one of those sharp-cornered tables Bond was so disapproving of.

Instead, Bond ends up sprawled in a chair, Q standing between his parted legs with both arms bracing himself on the—yes, admittedly very pointy—table edge behind him as one of those broad hands moulds itself against the curve of his cock. “You should take better care of yourself,” murmurs Bond, and his other hand deftly works down the zip of Q’s cardigan.

“What makes you think I don’t?” Q hazards a glance at the leftover takeaway he’d picked up for dinner. “Paella is perfectly healthy.”

“I saw you before you got on the plane. You were shoving enough pills down your throat to kill a moose.”

Q isn’t altogether sure why this is coming up now, but he answers anyway, as authoritatively as he can while Bond is leaving damp, distracting kisses just above his belt buckle. “Don’t be ridiculous, I know the exact dosage someone of my build can handle.”

“By all means, tell me more about how much you and your build can handle.”

The absurd thing about 007—one of many things, really—is that he can use the most appalling lines known to man and somehow still make Q want to shake off his trousers and crawl into his lap.

Bond is looking at him, thin mouth twisted up in an infuriating little smirk that Q can’t decide whether he wants to kiss or slap. And then Bond is drawing him in, close and cautious and fuck it, it’s been a long day and Q doesn’t particularly feel like battling with his conscience.

Besides, he never cared for these trousers anyway.

---

The stuffed peppers are the tipping point.

“Are you my poison taster now, is that what this is?”

Bond resolutely swallows and says nothing.

“Oh,” says Q. “Oh, God, you can’t be serious.”

By the time he manages to pry his face out of his hands, Bond is gone.

---

On the one hand, it’s the most hilarious thing that’s happened to him since he signed on as quartermaster. Not just anyone can cough and suddenly have 007 himself appearing out of the woodwork to stoically make sure he hasn’t collapsed in a pool of his own blood.

On the other hand, it’s more than a little condescending and Q would really rather believe it’s all in his head. He’s been underestimated more times than he cares to count and Bond isn’t doing him any favours by continuing the streak.

Being new to the job doesn’t make him an idiot. He knows as much of Bond’s history as he’s been able to access. By now he even knows a few extra things. The way he can’t abide coriander but choked down a bite of Q’s avocado salad that one time anyway. The way he keeps his liquor cabinet arranged. The way he groans when he’s about to come.

The way his voice goes low and pleased when he’s got Q’s mouth around his cock, his hands tugging lightly at Q’s hair just the way he likes.

Q tamps down a sudden, indescribable urge to smoke something potent and crawl under his bed for a week. He’s an adult. He can handle this.

Still, he finds himself somewhere between flummoxed and furious when he arrives at work early the next day only to discover that not only has Bond beaten him to the punch, he’s also affixed foam borders around all the table edges in the lab.

Bond says he finds manual labour relaxing. Q is ready to reluctantly agree, since after all, it very well could be helping him deal with his copious amounts of post-traumatic stress.

What Q says instead is, “That's a crock of shit.”

Bond glares at him, but it’s more of a come-hither look than an actual glare. And maybe Q’s resolve isn’t all it’s cracked up to be after all since he winds up gasping for breath against Bond’s shoulder and scrabbling for purchase at one of those nicely childproofed desks—because that’s what Bond is bloody well doing, childproofing. Next thing Q knows, he’ll be pureeing his food instead of just sampling it. This can’t keep happening, Bond needs to know that this can’t keep happening.

Q tries. He really does. “This can’t, ah, this can’t keep—”

Bond’s pale lashes dip. “Is this going to turn into one of those speeches about how imprudent it is to fuck the people you work with?”

“Oh,” says Bond, velvet-voiced. “That can change. Would you like that?” He taps gently at Q’s lips until Q obediently parts them, sucks his forefinger in. “Suppose I slipped a finger or two up your tight little arse and sent you back to your toys like that, stretched open just enough to drive you mad from wanting something more. Would you even be able to last until after hours? Or would you be spreading yourself over the bonnet of my car and begging to be fucked?”

In another life, Q’s response to this is far more suave than moaning and rutting against Bond’s trouser leg like an untrained puppy.

He curses himself, takes a second finger into his mouth, lets Bond grin against his ear. “Have you had enough or are you ready to come in your pants already?”

Q gives a final lick to the pads of his fingers. “Who says I’m wearing any?”

He straightens his glasses and strolls away before Bond can answer.

---

One of the lab rats comes in wearing a perfume that has Q sneezing up a storm every time they cross paths.

“Stop frowning at me like that,” he says mildly when Bond inevitably pops by to make sure Q hasn’t somehow blown himself to smithereens. “I’m not dying.”

When Q starts switching out a frayed cable, Bond looks like he’s steeling himself up for a nuclear explosion. For someone who’s supposed to take orders for a living, he’s absolute shit at following them. "Christ, you just washed your hands. Give it here. Which outlet do you want it plugged into?"

Q irritably snatches the extension cord out of his reach. "Maybe you weren’t aware, but I work with technology. That is my occupation."

"Listen,” Bond says, “everything is wireless these days anyway, just leave it be and for God’s sake stop trying to make a point before you electrocute yourself."

“Is that a banana peel on the floor," Q practically shrieks.

Everyone in the room stops and stares at him.

Except for Bond, who actually checks. Blink-and-you-miss-it brief, but he checks.

There is nothing remotely resembling a banana peel anywhere in sight.

This is far, far more serious than Q realised.

“I need a drink,” he declares, and stalks towards the stairwell with all the poise he can muster.

---

Bond finds him, of course.

Bond makes himself comfortable in the seat across from him and orders something that sounds pretentious and sophisticated and intensely flammable. If he’s discreetly checking for snipers in the corners or anthrax in the margarita salt, Q doesn’t lift his head to see it.

Eventually, it becomes clear that Bond has no intention of being the one to start this conversation. Q takes a very large swallow of his margarita, sits up straight, and folds his hands as if he’s giving a job interview. “So. You seem to be operating under the impression I can’t go two steps without doing myself some sort of injury.”

“Of course not,” Bond says. “You’re very good at what you do.”

Q waits.

“But you’re also very new. You’re young. You’re still learning.”

If he digs his nails into his hands, maybe he can keep from dumping the rest of his drink over 007’s head. “Is that what this is, I get on my knees for you like a good little boy and maybe you’ll let me think for myself every now and then?”

“Nobody,” Bond says flatly, “should ever make the mistake of writing you off as a good little boy.”

“Then stop,” Q hisses. He’s jittery, ready to fly apart even as he leans in. Bond is half-smiling at him when their eyes lock, swallowing Q up in searing blue. “Stop treating me like one. Come home with me and prove you’re capable of that much.”

And for once, 007 does precisely as he’s told.

---

This is new. This is very, very new.

Q hasn’t ever had him over, has scarcely even thought about the possibility. He’s anticipating and dreading it in equal portions when Bond takes his first look at his flat.

It’s the opposite of Bond’s own recently reinstated flat in nearly every way. Bookshelves spilling their excess onto side tables, the television stand, and the floor. A jumble of game consoles Q has too much dignity to defend. A floor lamp with a cord stretching clear across the sitting area, though Q’s gotten so accustomed to stepping over it it’s never been a problem. A desultory series of framed art prints hung on the walls.

“You’re living in a death trap,” Bond notes, but there’s humour in his tone.

“Fuck off, I am not,” says Q, and herds him towards the bedroom.

Fortunately, his bed seems to pass muster. As does the floor, since Bond has no reservations about scattering clothes from one side of the room to the other before Q’s knees even meet the mattress.

It’s a pleasant surprise when only thing that gives Bond any sort of pause at all happens to be the drawer of Q’s night table, which he practically wrenches onto the floor during a frantic hunt for lube. And even then, it’s almost worth it just for the expression of sheer consternation on his face when he comes up short time and time again. “What the hell is that?”

Q traces the delicate scar just above one hip bone, bites at it gently before glancing up. “That? Oil-free nightly moisturising cream that doesn’t clog the pores. As you so astutely noticed the instant you met me, I still have spots.”

Bond smirks as if he’s ready to concede that point, then gives a rather agonised groan. “Christ. You’re a fucking child.”

Q twines a leg over his hip. “I’m afraid I just can’t bring myself to call anyone daddy until we’ve at least passed the one-month mark. Is that going to be a problem?”

That gets him a punitive cuff to the head. “Cheeky fucking tart.” But his eyes go a bit glazed, closed off, and Q has to wonder how long it’s been since Bond last passed the one-month mark with anyone. Some information is too classified for even the cleverest information specialist to crack.

“Enough,” Q tells him. “God, enough thinking, all right?” And he ducks, mouths a slow, hot trail up the rippling arch of Bond’s flank until he feels a hand clench in his hair—just hard enough to have his eyes on the brink of watering, just how he likes it best, and Q can’t remember when Bond started knowing these things about him but the least he can do is give back a little knowledge of his own. He sits up, slots their mouths together hard enough to taste the lingering bitterness of Bond’s pretentious drink. There’s the small peak of a nipple under his palm, the press of a hard-on against the join of his thigh, the curl of a tongue against his own, and Q isn’t sure he can get a word in edgewise but he has to fucking well try.

“It’s not your fault your cock might as well be a weapon of mass destruction. Really, it’s not. Give it a few years and some brilliant team of avant-garde scientists might even be able to isolate the gene for it.”

For a moment, Bond looks positively stunned.

It wasn’t exactly what he’d planned on saying, but Q tucks the resulting look into the back of his mind all the same since he doubts he’ll have the pleasure of seeing it often.

Then both those thick arms are catching him round the waist and Bond is uttering a surprised bark of a laugh up against his temple. “Fuck, the mouth on you.” And flipping him over, gentle and dizzying all at once, then kissing him until Q’s mouth is good for nothing but whining and hanging slackly open once he’s drawn away.

“Now,” says Bond, palms sliding up his legs, guiding his thighs apart, “do you have anything at hand that isn’t spot cream?”

---

Q can’t remember how long he’s been like this, caught in limbo with his mouth aching from being kissed, throat bared and bitten, nails raking Bond’s back raw and James, Christ, James.

“Ah,” murmurs Bond. “There. You can feel it, can’t you?”

“What?” His voice somehow cracks at least three times on that word alone. Bond is smoothing a hand over his cheek and Q grips his wrist with unsteady fingers, turns towards it with his mouth open, greedily latching on.

“The way you go so tight all over, like you’re trying to keep me out, then try to loosen up and take me in. There. Just there.”

Bond's fingers are rubbing gently, slick and sinful, toying just at the edge of his hole without ever entering. “If only there were something I could do. Some way of helping you along.”

And he moves before Q even has time to beg.

He can’t think, not like this. Not with both bent knees over those thick-muscled shoulders, being tongued until his voice has climbed about five octaves and he can’t even be sure the curses he’s babbling exist in any actual language. As long as they come across as please, fuck, more, he couldn’t care less.

When he gives up all pretence at speech, there’s nothing left to do but try and remember the mechanics of breathing—just breathing, both of them falling so silent even the rustling of sheets between Q’s white-red fingers is audible. Hot little gasps and the flick-flickering of Bond’s tongue in a neat little circle, never pressing, never penetrating, just tracing against him in the worst sort of tease.

The first finger is enough to make him sob, try to twist his hips down for more.

Unexpectedly, Bond actually gives it to him. Slips in a second one and licks up into him all over again, works him wet and wide open and curls his fingers just enough to have Q arching off the bedding with a there, oh fuck, there.

“Go on.” Bond’s mouth is on his again and Q squirms down on the thickness of his fingers, suckles at his tongue and lower lip like he’s starving for it. “That’s it, show me what you can do.”

Even half off his head with the need to come, he knows a challenge when he hears one.

There’s nothing elegant about it, the way Q clambers overtop him and fumbles a condom out of its packet, but it doesn’t matter. Both of Bond’s broad hands are gripping his hips and he’s practically gagging for it by the time he sinks onto his cock, rolls his hips down hard and hears a slew of curses in both their voices. Bond presses deep, grips his arse mercilessly to spread him open just a bit more. His cock is thick, forces the breath from his lungs, and when Q topples against his chest Bond is ready for him.

“Next time,” Bond is rasping at him, his teeth nipping the crest of Q’s ear, “Christ, next time I’m strapping you down and making you come on my fingers, then I’ll turn you over and have you all over again, just to see if you can get off without a hand on you.”

Q comes that way, cock rubbing up against the hard planes of his stomach, nails raking red trails down the shifting muscles of his biceps. Bond doesn’t slide out of him right away, holds him in place as Q mouths absentminded little bite marks into his chest.

---

He remembers Eve telling him, conspiratorially smiling, “They say that he shaves with a straight razor just for the fun of it.”

“They say he takes his coffee blacker than Satan’s heart and served in the skulls of his enemies,” Q had said back. “Is there anything else I ought to know?”

Eve had only laughed and pretended to throw a biro at him. “Oh, I imagine you’ll find out for yourself.”

Bond is lying on his back, marked to hell and back, sweaty and sleep-sluggish and possibly the least intimidating Q has ever seen him. Q is half tempted to slip out of bed and seek out his mobile just to have a snapshot for posterity, but his plan is doomed from the start by the effort of walking and the weight of an arm settling over his back.

“If you’re going to give me that lecture about not fucking your co-workers, now’s probably the time to get it out of your system.”

The answers, of course, are endless. Bond’s entire espionage career is thirty percent honey trap and sixty percent terrible things happening, with the last judicious ten percent reserved for his uncanny ability to always escape relatively intact.

Bond’s fingers wind their way into his hair, scratching lightly. A few hours ago, Q might have taken umbrage at being treated like a pet, but he thinks he’s made his point now. Though he does intend to pack coriander-laden lunches for the next few days just in case Bond’s bad habits persist.

By the time Bond answers him, Q is half asleep and not actually expecting to hear one at all. His hand is still caught in Q’s hair and he sounds a bit odd, as if he’s stuck somewhere between a grunt and a sigh and maybe the faintest breath of a laugh.